


Happy Chris-mas

by satismagic



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Accident, Christmas, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PintoBarSecretSanta2014, Sickness, accident recovery, sickness recovery, top!Zach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satismagic/pseuds/satismagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an accident on the set of "Finest Hours" brought Zach and Chris together, they celebrate their first Christmas as a couple in a lonely log cabin in the mountains, far away from it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Chris-mas

Chris wakes from a nightmare. His stomach twists in the aftermath of the dream. Disoriented, he struggles to sit up and shivers in the cold darkness of the room, not quite sure if he’s still asleep or already awake.

When the door opens, he jumps, his heart pounding.

“I’m sorry.” Zach comes over to sit on the bed with him. “I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to wake you. Did you have a bad dream again?”

Chris nods. In the indigo twilight before the dawn it’s easy to lean into Zach’s embrace. For a while they sit like that in silence, wrapped up in their thoughts and in each the other’s arms.

“Drowning again?” Zach asks, pulling the duvet up and tucking it firmly around Chris. He doesn’t protest. Although he’s mostly recovered from his accident on the set of “Finest Hours”, he really shouldn’t catch a cold.

“No,” Chris says. He hates how soft and breathy his voice is, a symptom of vocal cord paralysis. First he screamed himself hoarse, caught in the flooded hull of the ship, the artificial ventilation did his already abused throat no favors, and then he developed a viral infection of the throat on top of his pneumonia. “I was back on the set of ‘Into the Woods’. The forest went on forever. I was alone, and I got lost.” His voice breaks, and he sucks in a wheezy breath.

Before he can clear his throat, Zach reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand and hands it to Chris. “Slowly.”

Chris nods and takes a careful sip. His speech therapist is trying to break him of his habit of painfully clearing his throat. He needs to go real easy on his vocal cords right now. “Thanks,” he croaks and grimaces. When the glass is half-empty, he tries again. “The witch was there,” he says, sounding more like himself now. “But it wasn’t Meryl. It was, like, the real thing. She said it was just a dream.”

Zach frowns. “But that’s good, isn’t it?”

Chris shakes his head and can’t bring himself to look at Zach. “Not – not the nightmare.” He swallows hard and that hurts. He’s tempted to shrug the dream off and lie. But they promised each other honesty when they finally acknowledged this thing between them, back when there was still a pretty good chance that Chris wouldn’t make it. “ _This._ You, me.”

“Oh, baby.” Zach holds Chris closer, holds him never-let-you-go tightly, and kisses his temple. His lips are warm and soft, but his morning stubble is scratchy. “No. It’s not a dream. It’s real. Let me show you just how real.” Another kiss, forceful, with teeth and tongue. But instead of tugging Chris down onto the mattress to demonstrate with a blowjob just how real he is, Zach gets up and pulls Chris to his feet. “Come on,” Zach adds briskly, “put on some warm clothes.”

Chris groans. “The sun isn’t even up yet! Isn’t it like, the darkest day of the year today or something? We should just stay in bed all day. What were you doing up and about, actually?”

“ _Actually_ , solstice was yesterday, so as of today the days are getting longer again and brighter,” Zach says in his best know-it-all voice. But before Chris can complain, he goes on, “I had a nightmare, too. I didn’t want to wake you – you need your sleep. So I got up, and... Come on, I really want to show you something.”

When Zach gets like that, there’s only one thing Chris can do: obey. So he pulls on two pairs of socks, soft cotton socks and warm woolen socks, fleece lined lounge pants, a Henley, a thick sweater, and a soft scarf to protect his poor throat. Zach picks up a woolen blanket with every indication of wrapping Chris up in it like a mummy at the first chance he gets. Shoving his feet into felt slippers, Chris shuffles outside into the main room of the log cabin they’ve rented in the mountains, to spend their first Christmas together far away from it all.

The paps have been an absolute pest. Chris’ accident was already a fucking pap magnet, but Zach rushing to his side, _staying_ there – and subsequently breaking up with his boyfriend to be with Chris – elevated the story to the celeb drama of the year.

Chris would go crazy if he wasn’t so happy. (And if he wasn’t still quite low on energy after being in hospital and then stuck in his bed at home for weeks and weeks.)

The living room of the log cabin is just as cold as the bedroom. Maybe colder, because it’s larger. Chris stops in the middle of the room and frowns. Nothing seems out of place or in any way extraordinary.

“What did you want to show me?” He tries not to sound cranky. Because that’s stupid. Especially after that dream. He shouldn’t get mad at Zach because he got scared that Zach wasn’t real. Because Zach is real. Perfectly real. Really perfect, too.

“Here,” Zach says softly, pulling him over to the eastern windows over the bench of the dining table and making him sit down.

At first Chris doesn’t see anything. The log cabin is built on a mountain ridge. The living room has windows to the east, the south, and the west, the bedroom and bathroom face north and up the mountain. Slowly, Chris realizes that the colors of the sky are changing, brightening. There’s no hint of the sun yet, no purple, no pink, no gold of sunrise, but the darkness of the night is fading. The sky isn’t black or even indigo anymore, but more like Prussian blue. There’s light here somewhere. And in that diffuse brightening before the dawn, Chris suddenly sees it: frost on the windowpanes. On the glass, hoarfrost has painted an abundance of exotic flowers, blossoms and leaves unfurling along the window frames.

_“Ohhhhh...”_ Chris’ exclamation hits the window in hot, humid gust. Immediately, the most delicate fractal patterns at the center of the pane melt away. Zach laughs and kisses him again. His lips are warm and firm and, very, very real. “I’ve never seen something like that before,” Chris whispers. “It’s beautiful.”

“With modern insulation, it’s become kind of rare,” Zach says. “As a kid I saw frost patterns like that quite often – in the sacristy of the church we went to. That was a pretty old building.”

Chris knows that Zach used to be altar boy, and that he still misses the solemn ritual of mass sometimes. Zach has such a thing for mysticism. Sitting here with him now, Chris feels Zach’s heartache over losing this spiritual childhood home, in spite of his profound political and personal criticism of the church as an adult.

So far, Chris himself hasn’t had to deal with any negative repercussions about the first relationship with a man in his life. His family, friends, and management are supportive. Even Paramount is more interested in his health than the fact that the epic bromance of Kirk and Spock has turned into an epic romance of Pine and Quinto. Basically, everyone is too busy gushing about how glad they are that he isn’t dead.

Well, so is Chris. But he’s even gladder to be alive in Zach’s arms.

♥

In the afternoon they tumble back into the cabin red-nosed, bright-eyed, and laughing. Predictably, Chris is wheezing, and of course Zach’s immediately concerned, pulling out the second inhaler he insists on carrying. Chris inhales and gags and inhales again and... doesn’t puke, thank fuck. It actually helps that Zach is holding him, but damn, this kind of shit is getting old fast.

The relief when he can breathe again is visceral. Breathing is so fucking underrated. Until you can’t breathe, you don’t realize how vital it is.

And then Chris can’t breathe _again_ , but this time for a vastly more pleasurable reason, namely because Zach’s kissing him.

They cling together, and it’s one of those intense, sappy moments. They have a lot of those moments because it’s just so palpable how close they came to miss this, to miss each other. Zach was preparing to move into a new home with Miles, while Chris was... well, trying to make sense of himself, a single man once more, and not doing a very good job. Well, he would have muddled through somehow.

It’s weird how almost but in the end thankfully not dying changes things.

It’s actually a lot like in the movies.

They pull apart and laugh at each other. They laugh a lot, too. Just, like, look at each other and laugh. There’ve been tears, too, but laughing is a far more comfortable response to the turmoil of emotions that still grips them now and again. Because he’s alive. He wasn’t like, really dead. A little dead, maybe. They resuscitated him right away. But yeah, what with the pneumonia and all the complications because he ended up with so much bacteria-infested water in his lungs... He’s never been that sick in his life before, with actual acute danger of death, and that... well, sometimes it still makes him feel strange. Strangely fragile. It has definitely turned Zach into a worse mother hen than the character of Dr. McCoy in Star Trek.

Chris can’t suppress a shiver.

“Jesus, get out of the damp clothes,” Zach says and pulls him upright. “Come on.”

“You can call me Chris,” Chris says and giggles, laughs until he wheezes again, and Zach looks at him like he’s not sure if he wants to slap him or kiss him or both.

They end up taking a hot bubble bath together, because apparently Chris can’t be trusted not to drown even in a tub if left to his own devices. Chris doesn’t mind at all. Naked, hot, wet Zach is one of the best things ever. And the way Zach presses his hard cock against Chris’ ass is promising, oh so promising. Because they haven’t had sex yet.

At first Chris was too sick to do more than squeeze Zach’s hand in return. When they kissed the first time, for a moment Chris thought he’d died after all and gone to heaven, and that’s not even a joke. To feel Zach’s lips, to see his eyes warm and dark with more than friendship, that _is_ heaven. When Chris got better, they expanded their repertoire to include handjobs and blowjobs – Zach blowing Chris, that is, because Chris can’t reciprocate yet without wheezing and gasping and needing the inhaler, and that’s an instant boner kill. And Zach’s so insistent on taking things slowly, not just because Chris is still recovering, but because he’s never done anything with a man before. This is how they’ve managed to make it until Christmas without any actual fucking, and if there’s one thing Chris wants for Christmas this year, it’s being introduced to the wonders of anal sex. Of course Chris has thought about that act before. He’s inexperienced when it comes to men, not completely clueless. He even had this one girlfriend who was, well, anally inclined. She had liked that kind of sex more than doing it the usual way, and Chris had enjoyed it, too. Quite a lot, even. So far, however, Chris has never wanted to be the one who gets fucked in the ass. But now that’s exactly what he wants. There’s nothing he wants more.

But after the bath, he’s weak enough again that he actually needs Zach’s help to get out of the tub. Exhausted enough, too, that he doesn’t put up a fight when Zach towels him dry like a kid and bundles him off into bed. It’s a saving grace that Zach slips under the covers next to him and spoons him, even rubs against the crack of his ass again until Chris is reduced to helpless moans, slick with sweat and pre-come. Somehow Chris manages to fall asleep on the brink of orgasm, which is delicious and frustrating at the same time.

When Chris wakes from his nap, it’s getting dark again, and Zach’s still asleep. It’s a rare opportunity to just stare at Zach as much as he wants. Zach’s face looks incredibly soft, now that he’s shaved off the terrible beard he had to don for “The Slap”. His hair, just beginning to outgrow the stubble of his jungle retreat hairdo, is terrible. Tousled and tufted and ever so fluffy. Chris wants to smush his face into Zach’s hair because it smells so nice. Not just like his hipster shampoo and conditioner and that molecular perfume of his but like _Zach_. He notices that Zach’s still exhausted himself, with shadows under his eyes, a hint of a frown even in sleep, his lips pressed together tightly… And it’s, well, not Chris’ fault precisely, but if he hadn’t almost died, then Zach would spend this Christmas in a new house in New York with another man, not up here in the mountains with Chris. Zach’s life would be running a very different and smoother course.

And Chris is so selfishly thankful things have turned out the way they have. With him a) alive, and b) in love. With Zach.

As he watches Zach peacefully asleep at his side, he thinks how much he cherishes Zach. How he really wants to pamper Zach, too. Wants to do something for Zach. Like the thousand things Zach’s doing for him every day since he got home from the hospital. Like always carrying an extra inhaler (sometimes carrying _Chris_ , or nearly) and holding him while he coughs and curses. Like making sure he eats enough and takes all his meds, and in general does everything the doctors and therapists have told him to do. Like not making a big deal of Chris’ nightmares, but always being there, and _aware_.

_Eggnog._

That’s the idea that comes to Chris. He’s aware that this is not, like, conjuring up unicorns standard of Christmas magic, but his granny did have this very special recipe, and he knows it by heart. He’s been thinking a lot about gran lately. First in the hospital, and then when he was stuck in bed at home for weeks. How she stayed strong and cheerful even after the stroke. Chris is smart enough to know how close he came to lasting brain damage, and that’s... disconcerting to say the least.

He gets up with a last look at Zach, curled up on his side, relaxed, peaceful, beautiful. _His._ To think that until just a few weeks ago he’d had no idea how much he wanted Zach... Promptly, his throat tightens painfully.

And Chris isn’t religious, not even as spiritual as Zach is, but he still whispers a heartfelt “thank you” under his breath as he leaves the bedroom and heads for the kitchenette.

Fifteen minutes later, the eggnog is simmering, and the scent that Chris has always associated with Christmas at his grandmother’s place is wafting through the log cabin.

He’s not surprised when the bedroom door opens right on cue. That smell is simply too delicious. It could raise the dead.

Zach stands in the doorway and stretches, and just seeing him like this, disheveled, his face all sleepy and squishy, the way only family members and lovers ever see you, that fills Chris’ stomach with butterflies, makes it flutter, makes him gasp – which of course brings Zach to his side at once. They lose time kissing. Zach’s way of making sure that Chris is still breathing okay seems to be a layman’s version of mouth-to-mouth that involves a lot of tongue until he renders Chris breathless and speechless, at least momentarily.

_“Eggnog, eggnog!”_ Chris gasps finally, a Christmas version of crying “uncle”.

Zach laughs, getting the drift, and helps pouring. Because that’s not enough, he makes sure that Chris is safely snuggled on the sofa under a pile of blankets before he kindles the fire in the enormous fieldstone fireplace.

A few minutes later, Zach wriggles under Chris’ blanket, they cuddle up as closely as possible and clank their mugs of eggnog for health and happiness.

♥

“You didn’t!” Chris gasps. He’s laughing, not wheezing, but he’s gasping for breath all the same, and blinking away tears of mirth as he cranes his neck. “You didn’t just put _tinsel_ on my dick.”

“But it’s _Chris_ -mas,” Zach giggles at his own witticism, “and we don’t have a tree yet. And in terms of morning wood, this is a particularly perfect specimen of Pine. Who wouldn’t think of—”

Chris cuts him off with a kiss. Moments later, he’s out of breath and giddy with the moment. “Zach,” he gasps and clumsily rubs the glittering strings off his cock. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” Zach asks, carefully peeling off a last silvery thread that has gotten tangled around the base of Chris’ dick. “We’ve got time now, you know?”

Chris’ erection has flagged a little with the chafing and the laughing, but he’s still sure. He grips Zach’s arms and drags him down on top of him. “Yes, I am. All I want for Christmas is you. Your cock in my ass.”

“How romantic, Christopher.” But Zach cradles his head with such tenderness that Chris feels all melty inside.

The mechanics of the act require some serious negotiations because Zach thinks Chris should sit in his lap for more control and less pressure on his lungs, and Chris thinks he should be on his back because damn it, if he wants to bottom, he wants to _bottom_ , and besides isn’t that what his inhaler is for? Zach looks like he’s inclined to be stubborn, but when Chris kneels naked on the bed in front of him and outright _begs_ for it, Zach flushes and bites his lip, and relents.

Chris is familiar with the procedures from that one girlfriend, but finds it’s quite different when he’s the one being slicked up. Zach’s thorough. He draws out the process, and visibly enjoys how the rude sounds make Chris flush hotly, how even soft touches make Chris squirm helplessly. And when Chris bears down bravely against the burn of being stretched and fingered open, Zach lavishes him with praise and kisses.

Finally Zach pauses in his ministrations. Chris’s heart is pounding, and he’s glad he’s taken a double dose of his inhaler beforehand, because he’s already breathing hard.

“Ready, baby?” Zach sounds wrecked. “Because I’m not sure I’ll survive waiting much longer.”

Zach’s dick pressed against his taint definitely feels hard enough to pound nails. _So good._ Also seriously _big_. Chris loves the thrill of lust and nerves that courses through his body and makes him shudder. _Alive. I’m alive._

“Yeah,” he gasps. “Do it. Do me. _Please_.”

His blood is thrumming in his ears as he listens to the soft plastic sounds of Zach rolling the condom over his cock, and then the squeeze and squish of more lube. Finally, Zach’s leaning over him, pushing his thighs even further apart and pressing against his hole. Chris knows he should bear down to help, but he can’t move, he can only lie there and endure, but somehow that’s enough. He feels Zach enter his body, bit by bit, inch by inch. Zach pushes in so slowly that it seems to go on forever, and it’s almost a shock when he suddenly feels the weight of Zach’s balls pressed against his ass. He sucks in a deep breath and opens his eyes. Zach’s looking down at him, an expression of intense concentration on his face. And this, feeling fractured and made whole again, this is everything Chris has hoped for and more. It’s erotic and visceral and more intimate than any sex he’s ever had in his entire life.

_“Yesss...”_ Chris hisses, and Zach smiles, _smiles_ with crinkles and dimples and shining eyes, and claims the sweetest kiss before he starts moving. _Yes_ , Chris thinks, _oh yes_. That’s his last coherent thought. The rhythm of burn and pleasure leaves no room for anything but gasps and kisses. Somehow Chris gets his hand on his dick, which he finds solicitously slicked up with lube, and he matches Zach’s pace. He wants this to last forever, the push and pull of fucking, and for a few glorious moments that’s what it feels like, too, as if he’s stuck on the verge of orgasm for eternity, and it’s torture and it’s paradise, and he knows he’s making noises he’s never made before. But then Zach’s balls slap against his ass hard and heavy, and Zach stops moving abruptly, himself on the brink. His dick pulses against Chris’ prostate, and that gentle pressure is enough. Chris’ balls tighten and ache, he clenches involuntarily, and even as Zach slams into him once more, he comes, spurting all over his stomach and chest, all tension inside his body and his mind suddenly released.

“Jesus, _Chris_!” Zach cries out, pulls back, and shoves into Chris one more time. Coming down from his own climax, Chris feels every second of Zach’s orgasm, every jerk of his dick, every tightening of his balls. It’s glorious.

When it’s over, Zach’s arms are shaking with the effort of keeping himself raised above Chris’ body. He smiles at Chris, the most brilliant smile Chris has ever seen on his face. Then he dips down his head to lick a hot strip across Chris’ chest. He laps up come and sweat and kisses Chris’ nipples, before he lifts himself up and pulls out quickly. Chris can’t suppress a groan at the burn, and is immediately soothed with a gentle kiss. After he has dealt with the condom and wiped the jizz off Chris’ stomach with a tissue or two, Zach lies down next to him.

They stare at each other, sweaty and speechless and euphoric.

“Happy _Chris_ -mas,” Zach whispers, still enamored with that pun, and trails his fingertips over Chris’ cheek in a gentle caress.

“Yeah,” Chris replies and laughs softly. “Oh yeah, it is.”

He’s alive, he’s in love, and he’s never had a happier Christmas.


End file.
